Chapter 181<div>


    <h3 style="letter-spacing:-0.015em"><strong><~> Chapter 181</strong>


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    I was standing on top of our carriage in my true form. I didn''t have any clothes that would fit my body in this form though so I was standing therepletely naked, to my mild embarrassment.


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    "Are you sure those wings will hold her? She''s kind of huge..." Cecilia asked.


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    Morrigan shrugged. "She was able to glide with them in her normal form but she hasn''t tried them in that form."


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    "Be careful!" Be called out, she was a bit nervous because she would have to be the one to fix me up if something bad happened.


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    My true form was kind of huge and the difference in scale when my body transformed made things feel a bit weird. My true form shifted with me proportionally though so my wingspan was ratherrge, around half the length of the carriage and much wider than I was tall.


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    I took a few cautious ps of my wings, I still wasn''tpletely used to moving them yet. They felt natural on my body and I instinctively knew how to move them<em>intentionally</em>but that didn''t mean I knew exactly how I<em>should</em>be moving them. It was kind of like when you were nervous and you didn''t know what to do with your hands. The more you focus on them, the less you know where they should go.


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    Thinking back... I don''t really<em>know</em>how birds fly. I''ve seen them pping and gliding but I don''t know when the best time for each<em>was</em>exactly. I guess I can remember pigeons pping to gain lift off the ground. Did I jump and p? Would I fall?


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    My stomach started to get butterflies as I looked off the edge of the carriage. It wasn''t all that high up but with what I was about to do, the height made me nervous. For all I knew I was about to do the extent of waving my arms while jumping off of something, hoping it''ll work.


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    "Quit being a baby and jump!" Raya''s voice excitedly called out.


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    My face flushed a little but I decided I was putting this off for too long. I beat my wings while trying to get used to the muscles in my back. They were rippling with the exertion, awkwardly trying to get used to the feeling. I took a deep breath and jumped while trying to catch the air with my wings. After only two ps I could tell I wasn''t gaining any lift so I stretched them out and let myself glide back down, which thankfully wasn''t too difficult. As I descended I could<em>feel</em>the presence of air currents around me, yet none of them were powerful enough here to let me climb so I just let myself gently touch the ground.


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    <em>[Flying has increased from level 1 to level 2]</em>


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    Be ran up to me and was relieved that I wasn''t hurt. Gliding wasn''t that difficult but it wasn''t really what I was going for either.


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    "Booo, you were supposed to fly, not glide," Raya jokingly said.


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    I gave her a lopsided grin. "I couldn''t help it, I couldn''t get enough lift. My body isn''t light enough."


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    "Are you calling yourself fat too?" Raya joked.


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    Iughed and pushed her away.


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    Theo walked up rubbing his chin. "You know, maybe your wings aren''t meant to p that way. Did they feel natural?"


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    I shook my head. "Not at all, if anything it felt really odd moving my wings that way."


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    "May I touch your wings for a second?"


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    The thought made me shiver but I nodded and stretched a wing out toward him. I had to stifle a moan and bite my lip once he started touching and examining it.


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    "I think you''re going about this the wrong way. Your wings might be good for gliding but maybe they''re meant to use magic for lift. Are the subi from your world magical creatures?" Theo asked.


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    I shrugged. "I suppose? Actually, now that you mention it, a lot of depictions of subi don''t have them using their wings as wings at all, they just kinda... float around a lot of the time. Some of them even have tiny wings that grow out of their lower back instead of proper wings but I always kind of thought wings like that looked stupid."


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    He tapped his chin. "Maybe when this transformation happened it took your mental image of subi and applied that here. Maybe instead of wings as wings, you''re supposed to channel mana through them instead, kind of like when you''re using wild enhancement magic."


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    I sighed. "I don''t get it, it''s not like I<em>intended</em>to grow wings, it just<em>happened</em>. I know that my race is based on my views of subi but why did I suddenly grow wings<em>now?"</em>


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    "Maybe this was already part of how you viewed subi from the beginning, creatures that grow stronger and gain power over time."


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    I mulled over the idea, thenughed. "Creatures that get more powerful the more<em>sex they have."</em>I shook my head. "That has to be it, maybe that''s why new subi be ''lesser subi'' as well. By that logic<em>all</em>subi will grow stronger the higher level they be."


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    "It stands to reason," Theo said with a nod.


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    "Okay then." I stretched my wings out at either side of me. "My wings then, you said maybe I could channel mana through them like I do with enhancement magic. Let me try that."


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    I closed my eyes and slowly released my lustful aura from my body. Not a whole lot, just enough to allow myself to manipte the flow of mana outside of my body. This wasn''t something I had tried before but it felt easy, doing it this way made manipting my own mana simple. The aura crept up my wings until it was coating them from the outside, I then let the mana seep deeper into them until they werepletely saturated in mana.


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    My stomach twisted as my center of gravity suddenly felt off, it was like the feeling you get when you swing up on a swing right at the apex. I felt odd but my body felt lighter. I stepped away from my friends and even walking felt odd like this. I jumped and with a single p, I climbed thirty feet into the air. My stomach did somersaults as the sudden jolt made me lose concentration and my aura flowed out of me entirely, making me lose the saturation in my wings.


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    Being this high up with my aura flowing around my body made it easy to detect and glide toward one of the air currents I could feel nearby. I steered into it and buoyed up even higher. My eyes widened as I saw the road we would be traveling on fall away below me. I got a bird''s eye view of it as it stretched off into the distance and over the hills. The sight was breathtaking.


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    <em>[Flying has increased from level 2 to level 5]</em>


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    Once I had regained my bearings I focused on my aura again and resaturated my wings with mana. After the first time, it was much easier to do, but I got a strange feeling from it. My internal mana was starting to circte inside of my wings as well. I gasped in surprise as I realized something,<em>I wasn''t treating my wings like an actual part of my body!</em>They were like a separate appendage, something that was stuck onto me without being<em>part</em>of me. Now that I kickstarted the flow of mana into them I was starting to see them as<em>my</em>wings.


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    As the current of mana flowed through them, I felt something akin to blood rushing into them like they had been asleep, pins and needles and all. Unlike my blood though, mana was something I could control. Like using a muscle that I had been training every time I used<em>[Light Maniption]</em>, I was able to awkwardly grab onto the mana inside me and circte the mana faster or saturate it more.


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    <em>[Internal Mana Maniption Lv. 1 unlocked - Sessfully manipted the mana circting through your body]</em>


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    My wings suddenly felt amazing, like a numb part of my body had woken up and now was feeling everything in rich sensations. I could now feel the mana moving through the entire body and with a tweak, adjust<em>how</em>it was circting. Unwilling to alter things further while still in the air, I just set the feeling aside forter experimentation.


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    I looked around. I had gotten quite far away from my friends in the time I had been flying. I decided to turn around and head back. I instinctively angled my wings and allowed myself to bank to the right and turn to double back. While the feeling felt natural for my wings, it<em>did not</em>feel natural to my stomach. My stomach dropped as I got used to moving through the air like I was on a roller coaster. It was a relief that we were parked along the road because it gave me a really clear direction to head back.


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    I banked into another pocket of warm air that let me continue to glide along further. The warm air felt nice on my nipples andhers that started to feel cold against the wind all this time. The feeling of flying was like a dream, something unbelievable and magical. Even more magical than all the<em>magic</em>I had been using up until this point. The feeling was amazing.


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    <em>[Flying has increased from level 5 to level 7]</em>


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    I was starting to get a headache and my stomach was starting to really rebel against me when I finally saw my friends standing by our carriage. When I reached the range of the bond I felt their worry, I had taken off unexpectedly and they had lost sight of me. The moment we reconnected though their worries rxed as they felt me return to them.


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    Mynding was awkward and I felt exhausted. I was going rather fast and I was barely able to stop myself from tripping and tumbling across the ground by pulsing enough mana into my wings to smooth the transition. When I finally stopped I fell to my knees and vomited. All the mana I was holding in my wings was suddenly cut off and my aura red before copsing back into my body.


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    Everyone ran up to me at once.


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    "Are you okay?" I heard Be worriedly call out.


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    Morrigan and Raya crouched down next to me. Morrigan''s hand traveled lightly across my forehead as the three of us came to a conclusion at the same time.


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    "Mana exhaustion!" Rayaughed out loud before flopping into the grass and giggling.


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    Morrigan chuckled and patted my shoulder. "Looks like you really pushed yourself to the edge. It''s a good thing you ran out of mana whilending, rather than while up in the air."


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    Sibyl crossed her arms and smiled down at Raya who was enjoying my misfortunate<em>far</em>too much. "It happens to the best of us," Sibyl said with augh.


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    I started to shift back to my normal size but I left the wings intact for the moment. I still wanted to experiment with my mana cirction. Though maybe... not right now... The thought of using<em>any</em>mana right now made my stomach turn and I needed to steady myself before I vomited again. Once I had finished shifting back to my normal-sized form Sibyl and Morrigan helped me back up to my unsteady feet.


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    "Lilith! That was so cool! I wanna fly next!" Mimi yelled out excitedly.


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    "So? How was your first flight?" Silva asked with a grin.


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    I grinned at her, "It was<em>fucking amazing."</em>


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    Mimi handed me some clothes to put on, just some simple work clothes and underwear, some of the same ones I had gotten back in Traehall. I frowned at the shirt, I couldn''t wear it with my wings out, I would need to cut holes into it. None of my other clothes were backless either. I shrugged and tore two vertical holes in the fabric. With my enhanced strength it was easy to rip, I just had to be careful not to pull too hard and tear the entire thing apart. I hid my wings until I could get the shirt on before holding the holes open and bringing the wings back out through them.


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    "What are you doing?" Morrigan asked curiously.


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    "I got a new skill,<em>[Internal Mana Maniption],</em>I want to practice changing how I circte mana through my wings. I think I can make the wings easier to use with some practice."


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    Theo smiled wide. "You got that skill already? Great! I was actually going to show the two of you how to get that skill soon, it''s the counterpart to enhancement magic, the same way something like<em>[Fire Maniption]</em>is to fire magic. It helps a lot with altering enhancement magic on the fly or wild casting it. The variation you can get makes the skill a lot more powerful and useful than many of the other maniption skills."


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    Morrigan''s eyes lit up. "Really?! That sounds amazing! I didn''t know there<em>was</em>a counterpart to enhancement magic!"


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    He nodded. "It''s a rare skill. Most people treat enhancement magic as cast-and-forget spells but the discipline is much more versatile with a little work. The way the two of you have been working, it was only a matter of time before I showed you how to learn it. How did you end up stumbling across it on your own?"


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    I scratched the base of my horn, feeling a bit bashful all of a sudden. "I actually learned it by ident. The way I got my wings to work was by saturating them with mana using my aura, once I did that they started to connect to the rest of my mana on their own, the same way my arm might. From there I was able to internally shift my mana around and I got the skill from doing that."


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    "Hmm, that''s very simr to how I was taught, though kind of in reverse. Aura skills are<em>very</em>rare, especially at lower levels, going outside-in rather than inside-out is a fairly novel way of doing things. Most people make the mana inside their body bleed outside of its confines using<em>[Internal Mana Maniption]</em>and then create an aura<em>that</em>way until they''re able to learn it as a spell. The usual way of learning<em>[Internal Mana Maniption]</em>is by forcibly increasing the mana in one part of the body until you''re able to sense how it circtes and then adjusting the path. It''s an effective training method but it requires<em>[Mana Sense]</em>or something simr to observe the change. Since both of you already have that, I was going to teach it to you soon."


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    Sibyl stepped forward. "Hey, one of our racial abilities lets us<em>see</em>magic. Would that be sufficient to learn this skill? It seems like it would be a natural thing to learn if we want to make use of our natural auras."


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    Theo rubbed his chin in thought before eventually nodding. "Actually, that is a good point. You should probably teach this to<em>all</em>of the subi. It would probably be valuable for all of you. I wouldn''t mind helping each of you learn it."


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    Everyone looked excited by the prospect but I noticed that Morrigan was giving uncertain nces towards Torien. This may end up being the lynchpin that forces the twins to make up their mind about whether or not to be subi, it appears Morrigan is getting antsy for an answer.


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